Place Planks And Plunder: Pixel Piracy

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I have been on a mission to reclaim the RPS piracy tag. I want happy stories about pirate games when you click on it, and not sad stories about games being pirated. I took a break, because of Assassin’s Creed IV’s ridiculous video spam, but I am delighted to direct your attention to Pixel Piracy. It puts you in charge of a pirate crew in a procedurally generated Caribbean.
I’ve been following progress over on IndieDB, watching as this cute-as-a-parrot sea-set roguelike sails into view. Now it’s closer (they sent RPS a tech demo that’s a bit broken), we can make out what’s on board. It begins with world-generation, asking me what I thought about my world (sickening, fascinating, unpleasant?), what the most recent events were (war, festival, comet flyover?), and how cowardly, brave, or drunk my father was. I won’t see enough of the world to see what difference this makes. An island is generated with some shops, and an incredibly jaunty tune begins. Piracy!

As the invisible guiding hand of piracy, I have to recruit a crew, give them all positions (people will starve without an onboard cook) outfit my ship, and set sail in my customised cutter. I get to design the shape of my ship in the editor, placing each plank where I want it to go, sinking in masts, and setting sail. It’s as simple as clicking together something a bit boat-shaped in the water, which is how I’d describe the monstrosity that I created. With my crew ordered on board, and one selected as a captain, I hit the world map. Onwards, to gather more resources and bump my petty little ship from a raft into a terrifying visage of piracy!

This is just a corner of what’s available. It’s pretty big. I selected an island not too far off and hit ‘sail’. Now this is where it’s clear that this incredibly early code: we arrived at a small island, I hear a roar that sounds like the T-Rex from Jurassic Park is on holiday, and order my strongest pirate onto the island. As soon as he touches land, the ground vanishes and he drowns. The map then won’t let me select another island to visit. I’m more annoyed that I can’t carry on: the atmosphere is lovely, and if that huge splash of blue has lots to see and do, and plenty of ships to fight, then I’ll eagerly take to its sea.

Of course in the future they’ll have holosims about software pirates swigging Dr Pepper and singing songs like “yo ho ho baby one more time” and “avast ye octopus’ garden”, while forcing publishers to walk a pixelated plank.

Alex Poysky and the whole team over there are doing a great job and I really look forward to the end project. They are taking an unprecedented level of feedback from the community to make the game everyone wants. This looks like it could very well be the true indie title of 2014. I expect my gaming time in 2014 will be split between Pixel Piracy, Starbound and Novus Aeterno.